SSD Archives - Page 3 of 17 - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: How is my PC booting from an empty hard drive?

Posted on December 1, 2025

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Question from Marvin: I read your article about upgrading a computer by switching to an SSD to make it run faster.

The following weekend I went to Best Buy and bought a 1TB SSD and cloned the contents of the existing 1TB hard disk onto it.

I then wiped the hard drive and formatted it. Then I installed the SSD in the computer, leaving the now-blank hard drive in place to store my data files on.

Everything works perfectly but something has me baffled. When I look in the BIOS it says the hard drive is set as the boot drive.

How is this machine booting into Windows when the boot drive is blank?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Will a computer tech be able to see my personal photos?

Posted on November 26, 2025

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Question from Kristen: The hard drive in my laptop has stopped working and I need to take it somewhere to have it fixed.

I’ve been taking your advice about creating regular System Image backups and I have a fairly recent backup they can use to restore everything once the bad hard drive is replaced.

What worries me is I have a lot of really personal photos that were backed up along with everything else. Will a tech be able to see them? [Read more…]

Q&A: Should I move my PC’s Page File from the SSD to a hard drive?

Posted on October 8, 2025

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Question from Braden: Hello, Rick. I recently took your advice and added an SSD to my three year old desktop computer.

I left the original hard drive installed as a data drive which begs the following question:

Do you recommend leaving the Page File on the SSD or moving it to the hard drive? [Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a really cheap, but reliable SSD for an older laptop?

Posted on September 8, 2025

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Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell laptop died a few days ago. This has been a great machine and I don’t want to just trash it.

I’d like to replace the bad hard drive with an SSD, but I’d rather not spend a lot of money if I can help it.

After reading your post about replacing Windows with Linux, I’d like to install Linux Mint on this laptop and use it as my primary Internet computer. I won’t need a lot of storage space so a fairly small SSD should be ok.

What I’m looking for a really inexpensive SSD that’s large enough to hold the new Linux installation and maybe a few Chrome extensions. But I’d like the SSD to be as reliable as possible. [Read more…]

Q&A: Will replacing the hard drive with an SSD make a PC run hotter?

Posted on April 28, 2025

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Question from Michael: I have a three year old laptop that runs a bit on the warm side. It always has, ever since I first took it out of the box.

I read your post about replacing a hard drive with an SSD and I’d love to replace the existing 1TB hard drive in this laptop with a 1TB SSD.

The thing is I’m afraid it will cause the laptop to overheat since it’s getting really warm already. Do you think it might? [Read more…]